Tag: CAP-politics

Stefan Tangermann (retired OECD Director for Trade and Agriculture, and Professor Emeritus, University of Göttingen) has written a powerful critique of the Single Farm Payment in Agra Europe. He concludes that 'Targeted payments to farmers providing specific public goods where they are needed are a much more convincing policy than general payments arguably justified by cross-compliance.'

1789: the people of Paris take the Bastille. 1848: republican upheaval all across Europe. 1917: the Communists take power in Russia. 2010: the European Socialists & Democrats declare in a position paper that the CAP needs to be revolutionized.

Forestry covers almost as much land as agriculture – but only 3% of the CAP budget is earmarked for forests. One would think that this imbalance would make forest owners long-standing critics of the CAP. Not so. For one thing, many forests are owned by the government, and governments won’t lobby against their own policy. More importantly, many forest owners also happen to be farmers, and the more powerful agricultural lobby has managed excessively well to subdue its smaller sibling in this close relationship.

22 member states agreed on the Paris Declaration on December 10, 2009. They include all those that had supported the call for increased dairy support, sponsored by France and Germany this autumn – that is, they excluded the small reform-oriented camp (UK, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, plus Malta). The document is a concoction of buzz words and stereotypes that shall somehow prepare the emotional ground for the continuation of wasteful agricultural subsidies.

The waste of tax payers money

Tax payers should not be forced to subsidize airlines that declare their in-flight meals as food exports. Nor should they have to finance economically absurd live cattle exports that are irreconcilable with animal welfare.
Michael Jäger, Secretary General of the Tax Payers Association of Europe (TAE), gives his opinions on the CAP.

Video: The rising voice of business

The business community would like to shift EU funds from agricultural subsidies to research & development. But they only complain without acting. Really? Here are Charlotte Nyberg of the Swedish Chambers of Commerce and Helena Bergqvist of the Confederation for Swedish Enterprise who have set out to change the EU budget.